1. Field
This disclosure is generally related to determination of people prominence. More specifically, this disclosure is related to a method for deriving a user's perceived importance of communication partners across multiple communication channels, social networks, and contexts.
2. Related Art
The ubiquity of emails and the rapid development of social networks have greatly expanded an individual's realm of communications. A person may find himself, on a daily basis, being bombarded with tens, even hundreds of communication messages, including emails, instant messages, Facebook™ posts, Twitter™ tweets, phone calls, text messages, etc. Sifting through such a large number of messages for something relevant presents a challenge to the person.
Many approaches have been adopted to help a user tackle this “information overload.” For example, various email management schemes have been incorporated into commercially available email systems, such as Microsoft Outlook™ (trademark of Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Wash.) or Eudora® (registered trademark of Qualcomm Inc. of San Diego, Calif.). For example, a sender of an email can flag an email as important, and a recipient of emails can filter the received emails into different folders based on various criteria, such as the sender of the email. Moreover, some social network sites, such as Facebook, prioritize a user's list of friends base on streams of communication between the user and his friends within that social network. However, these schemes only apply to a single communication channel, neglecting the fact that a user often interacts with people over multiple communication channels.